US stocks hit the skids with tech titans tumbling

The tech heavyweights that drove the stock market higher in the first few sessions of the year undid major indexes on Tuesday.

The S&P 500 fell 1.1%, the Nasdaq 100 retreated 1.8%, and the Russell 2000 dropped 0.7% on the session.

The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF slumped after data showed US job openings unexpectedly rose in November and the Institute for Supply Management’s December survey for the services sector pointed to stronger-than-anticipated activity, which contributed to the downturn in the stock market.

The so-called Magnificent 7 hit the skids, with all declining and, with the exception of Alphabet, all down more than 1%.

Nvidia opened up more than 2% at an all-time high on the heels of CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address at CES Monday evening before lurching to the downside in a vicious reversal. However, companies that Huang shouted out as key partners for the chip designer, like Micron, Accenture, KION GROUP, and Toyota, all performed well.

Tesla tanked, as the deterioration in the company’s fundamentals seemingly caught up with the stock, at least for one day.

Apple gave back 1.1% amid a rare downgrade to “sell” from a member of the Wall Street analyst community.

Palantir was the worst-performing member of the S&P 500, giving back 7.8% in its biggest one-day decline since May.

Bank of America booked a solid gain, leading its industry after receiving an upgrade to “buy” from UBS.

Getty Images and Shutterstock both soared as investors warmly received the announcement of a merger of the two stock-image firms.

Moderna also rallied strongly amid hopes that its development of a bird-flu vaccine will bear fruit.

More speculative, thematically oriented pockets of the market, like SoundHound AI as well as quantum-computing companies Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum, came under intense selling pressure.